by DailyDigest

This is Good News Friday, where we find some good economic, energy, and environmental news and share it with PP readers. Please send any positive news to [email protected] with subject header "Good News Friday." We will save and post weekly. Enjoy!

Economy

Many drug users say, in hindsight, they’ve appreciated being forced into treatment. But studies show that a compassionate approach and voluntary treatment are the more effective ways to engage drug users in recovery and keep them alive. That’s a critical consideration for families in this era of fentanyl, a powerful opioid that can shut down breathing in seconds.

“The concept of letting their children hit bottom is not the best strategy,” says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Because in hitting bottom they may die.”

Scientific and public interest in CBD had been percolating for several years before the Food and Drug Administration finally approved Epidiolex in June. But CBD — which doesn’t cause the mind-altering high that comes from THC, the primary psychoactive component of marijuana — was hard to study, because of tight restrictions on using cannabis in research.

The ballot initiative, which targets a large local hotel developer as well as Disneyland, would mandate further wage increases of up to $18 per hour by 2022 – by which time a state-imposed minimum wage of $15 per hour is set to kick in. A consortium of local business interests has already sought to define the ballot initiative as a “job killer” that would deter investment and leave everyone poorer.

Some scenarios the department says it is concerned with include attackers targeting voter registration databases or voting machines, or the power grid during the election. Operations aimed at removing eligible voters from voter rolls or manipulating elections results are something law enforcement is also considering, according to the report.

“My head went through the window. I had my seatbelt on, but half my body was out the window. My cousin grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me back in. I just remembered blood running down my face.”

While it’s anyone’s guess as to how many scrolls the library once housed, it’s fair to say the number would have been “quite huge — maybe 20,000,” Schmitz said. He noted that the newfound library is slightly smaller than the Celsus Library in Ephesus, which was built in A.D. 117. Even so, its discovery is “really incredible — a spectacular find,” Schmitz said.

Like many places in the state, the local economies were driven for years by tourism and agriculture. But unlike many, this city in the southwestern corner of Montana started to diversify its economy in the 1980s when photonics companies started to build lasers, and manufacturing and outdoor-gear firms also settled in. A conservationist might bump into a think-tank economist at one of the local breweries. Montana State University (MSU) provides both thousands of jobs and an annual batch of new employees.

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 against former President Barack Obama and government agencies in a federal court in Oregon. In a 2016 ruling, a judge allowed the case to proceed, prompting the government to appeal. The Trump administration, inheriting the case, had asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out or put on hold.

Blacklegged ticks infected with the Lyme disease bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi are wreaking havoc in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and north-central states, as well as the West Coast, particularly in northern California. Lyme disease accounts for more than 80 percent of tick-borne diseases and, even if caught and treated, can cause long-lasting and debilitating symptoms.

Leading the charge against the new regulation was Fitzgerald Truck Sales, the Tennessee-based manufacturer that stood to benefit most from the rule’s repeal. Fitzgerald, whose executives met with Pruitt last May, argued that the rule would disproportionately affect an industry that in 2015 produced about 10,000 gliders a year.

Gold & Silver

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